Merry Christmas!

Every year I get several emails telling me Christmas is a pagan holiday and I should avoid it.

This year I did some research and it looks like Christmas is not pagan.

There are those who claim Jesus could not have been born in December. It turns out the arguments against a December birth are far from conclusive 1. However, the issue is not when Jesus was actually born. If we want to know if Christmas is pagan, we have to know if those who started it thought Jesus was born on December 25th. Because if they thought it was so, then regardless of their being right or not, they set the date for Christmas based on the belief it was the day Christ was born.

The Jews at the time of Christ did not celebrate birthdays, and some suggested it was pagan to celebrate the birthday of the Messiah. I find this odd given the number of celebration days God gave the Jews to commemorate what He had done for them. Certainly, the giving of the Saviour would be a day to commemorate! However, this belief may be why we do not have a date for the birth of Christ found in early church writings. We do know the early church was much more concerned with the date of Jesus death than His birth. The most early records put the date of Jesus’ birth as April 2nd or December 25th, with the latter eventually becoming commonly accepted.

Why December 25th? Two good reasons:

Some early Christians estimated the date of Jesus’ crucifixion as March 25th. They then applied the Jewish concept of “integral age”, which said great prophets died on the same date on which they were conceived. If Jesus was conceived on March 25th, He would have been born nine months later on December 25th.

Early Christians believed the world was created on March 25th. Many reasoned Jesus would be conceived in the flesh on the same date. Again, this would put his birth on December 25th.

What of the pagan claims?

Some say the 25th was chosen to coincide with the winter solstice (in the Julian calendar the solstice did fall on that day). Even if this is true (and there is no evidence it is), that does not make it pagan. To the Jews of old it made perfect sense for the light of God to come into the world on the shortest and thus darkest day.

One common claim for the supposed pagan roots of Christmas is it was chosen to line up with the Saturnalia feast in ancient Rome. However, this festive ended by the 23rd of December.

In 274 AD, Roman Emperor Aurelian proclaimed December 25th the day for the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son”. This festival was an attempt to bring together various pagan groups, and was primarily a political move. However, this happened long after early Christians has decided December 25th was the birth date of Jesus. Some have suggested Aurelian chose the date to give pagans an alternative celebration. While we cannot know if this was the case, it is clear Christians “claimed” the 25th before the pagans did. Christians did not celebrate the birthday of Christ until later, but they had established the date.

I am not going to tell you Jesus was born on the 25th of December. We do not know, and it seems God did not care for us to know. However, the evidence convinces me early Christians chose the date for “Christian reasons”. Paganism had no part in the choice of December 25th.

In the tradition of the feast days God gave in the Old Testament, I see good reason to set aside one day to celebrate the greatest gift ever given.

I have no issue with picking December 25 as the date to celebrate Jesus' birth. However, your arguments are not that logical and are rather unconvincing. I am more comfortable with people just saying, "This is the date early Christians picked, so we're just going with it" rather than try to conclusively prove anything, because it honestly never sounds very intelligent. And it wasn't early Christians, it was early Catholics, if you want to be technical. And the Jewish prophet argument about dying on the same day they were conceived? He wasn't considered to be a great prophet by the people who crucified him, so that doesn't make any sense. We celebrate Christmas, and our kids say it's when we celebrate Jesus' birthday but we don't pretend the roots have no pagan origin(because a lot of our Christmas traditions do, sorry) or that Jesus was actually born then. Or that we should even give his birth only one day's worth of celebration. Let's just say, "It was picked so that's when we celebrate it" rather than say there are logical reasons why December 25th is right....because there are none. Sorry, I can rant, too. :-) But Merry Christmas!

Here's my thought on the "Jesus wasn't born on Christmas Day" issue: I have friends who adopted a child from another country -- a child who was discovered wandering the streets and taken into an orphanage. Doctors examined her and guessed at her age. The parents had no idea when she was born. So rather than this sweet child going without a birthday -- indeed, it felt right to celebrate her life all the more, given her challenging start -- they picked a day. Just picked it out of a hat, so to speak. They chose a day close to when they thought she might have been born, declared it her birthday, and celebrated like crazy.

I always think that's what we're doing with Jesus. I don't know when He was born, but I just flat out feel like celebrating it! December 25 works for me. It could just as easily be April 2, but whatever.

@mom2owen_liam My arguments were not to prove Jesus was born December 25th - I actually doubt He was. I was trying to show that those who chose the date did it for reasons that seemed right to them, not as some suggest to coincide with some pagan holiday.

As to the Jewish thinking, most of the early Christians were Jewish, and the brought their ideas with them. As to "early Christians" I would not call them Catholic until at least the 4th century , and the 25th was set long before that. (I realise the RCC would disagree with me on that!)